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Rob Sbaglia's Blog (68)

The idea of BYOD – Bring Your Own Device (or BYOT – Bring Your Own Technology) is something that is bubbling away in the back of my mind. But recently I’ve turned my thoughts to something more important to transforming education for our kids at Crusoe, and that is BYOP – students bringing their own passions to school, and how we tap into them.

How important is it that we are educating citizens to be scientifically literate? Very important.

As well as teaching the curriculum, I think we have an obligation as science teachers to be developing students' ability to think critically about scientific information they are exposed to in the media. Part of this is making students enthusiastic about science and get them to see it…

It's difficult for me to believe, on occasions, that it was back in 2010 when I started dabbling in getting students to contact experts outside of the school to support their own inquiry learning. Fast forward to 2013, and from Castlemaine via Maryborough I find myself at Crusoe College.

When innovating, the structures of a secondary school can make things more difficult than at a…

Crusoe College is the sixth school that I have been employed at as a teacher. Every school is different, with its own strengths and weaknesses, characteristics and foibles. It’s been just under three weeks, but I can’t help being excited at what is possible.

The start, as it has always been for me, is getting students to use a blog as a replacement, or addition to, their exercise book as a record of their learning. I have written many posts about the benefits of…

India is an incredible place to travel to. Several years ago, my wife and I spent a month travelling through the well-beaten path of Delhi, Agra and Rajasthan. The Mughal architecture is astounding, the sheer rhythm of life on the streets is almost overwhelming, and the food is, quite simply, glorious. While it's not an easy place to travel, it is certainly one of the most memorable places you could ever visit.

It's been a little while since I have blogged anything, but it has been a very busy time for me on a couple of fronts.

Something I've been grappling with has been the future of the Writers' Club. The community has been more successful than I ever could have imagined. It began as an offshoot for work I was doing for Castlemaine North Primary School, known locally asThe North School, which is where the address thenorthschool.com comes from.

It has been a tumultuous little period for me. I had the honour of being a part of two presentations by Lucy Gray, one at ISTE, where I had the opportunity to talk about the Writers' Club in particular and global learning in general.…

I'm embarrassed sometimes by the attitude some Australians have to our neighbours, New Zealand. Frankly, I'm a bit of a fan of the kiwis. They've given the world plenty, but for mine, their finest contribution has to be the Finn brothers...

One of the more mundane challenges of global learning, as I'm quickly discovering, is the lack of coordination in…

I'm often asked what the point of the Writers' Club is if you are already blogging. Surely having a global audience is not exactly revolutionary - all you need to do is to start a blog, and theoretically, you have a global audience, right?

Well, yes and no. The big problem I have found with blogging in the classroom is (a) finding the blogs of others, and (b) having your blog found by…

I was preparing a presentation for differentiating mathematics using technology recently, and ended up editing a TED talk by Salman Khan.

What struck me was Khan's idea that technology can humanise the classroom - which, as Khan acknowledges, is in some ways counterintuitive. Indeed, when I talk to teachers about technology in the classroom, they have visions of a very inhuman scenario, where students have their eyes glued to the screens, interacting with noone. I'd…

I was going to tackle this idea in a completely different way, then late at night I stumbled across this video. Watch it first before reading on, as it may give an insight to my state of mind when writing this.

Being a new dad is easily the most amazing experience of my life. My little girl, now thirteen months old, astonishes me every day with her rapidly developing communication skills, and her mobility - she has gone from slow crawling to pushing her wheelie-bug around the house with abandon in what seems like the blink of…

Since learning to speak a language myself, I've valued the role of languages in schools. One of the most life-changing periods of my life was when I went to live in the city of Perugia as a part of my PhD studies in 2000-2001. Immersed in Italian language, I went from knowing a few words to becoming close to fluent in three months. It was an astonishing transformation, one…

What could these three diverse places, a small town in country Australia, a large international city in China, and a mountainous state the US, possibly have in common?

I must say, when I started dipping my toes into the global education water, I had my doubts. It's not that I thought global education wasn't worthwhile... I thought of it as a "nice to have" rather than an essential part of my classroom. Like the best discoveries in life, the benefits of connecting globally have…

The Grade 5/6 students at Castlemaine North recently returned from Sovereign Hill, and upon their return, wrote "Top Ten Tips for Sovereign Hill Camp". One student wrote hers on the Writers' Club. As I have written in a previous post, all blog posts on the Writers' Club get put out to the twittersphere. Somehow, Sovereign Hill caught a…

This photo is of my brother and I in 1994. This is our first car, which we shared ownership over. If you can believe it, I'm the guy on the left! The colour of the car, if you're interested, is "Cypress Metallic Green".

If there's one thing I've been acutely aware of since working with teachers, it's making sure I don't rob teachers of a sense of ownership. I think this is because I know how I…

The big event in the past week or so in my life has been the first birthday of my daughter. We decided to have a party in our backyard, which necessitated much gardening. I am not much of a fan of gardening (I'd replace the lot with concrete if it were up to me!) but even I can appreciate the result. I love our back yard - green, lush, and with a sense of privacy.